Articles

Reversing its long-stand­ing sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Spokane Spokesman-Review recent­ly pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The paper not­ed that the deci­sion to change its stance on the death penal­ty came after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of grow­ing evi­dence that the news­pa­per’s ​“expec­ta­tions of fair­ness and jus­tice” are not being met and that the death penal­ty’s ​“draw­backs now out­weigh its mer­its.” The edi­to­r­i­al in full: It took Jermaine Herron sev­en min­utes to die, but it took Texas sev­en years to kill him. ​“I’ll…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Asbury Park Press, a news­pa­per that for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, called on New Jersey pol­i­cy­mak­ers to aban­don the state’s cost­ly death penal­ty and replace it with the ​“sure and swift” sen­tence of life with­out parole. Stating that New Jersey has wast­ed mil­lions of dol­lars on the death penal­ty, but has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since it was rein­stat­ed in1982, the edi­to­r­i­al not­ed: Can it real­ly be 22 years since Robert O. Marshall cow­ard­ly hired hit men to shoot and kill his wife and the mother…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in Nature, the inter­na­tion­al week­ly jour­nal of sci­ence, called on sci­en­tists and doc­tors to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tions: ​“Don’t advise, don’t pre­scribe, don’t inject. Let the death penal­ty die a nat­ur­al death.” Noting that courts are now con­sid­er­ing whether the death penal­ty by lethal injec­tion should be out­lawed as inhu­mane, the edi­to­r­i­al points out that the pro­ce­dure was large­ly devel­oped with­out the input of physi­cians, nurs­es, or sci­en­tists. It also notes that research has shown that pris­on­ers might still be con­scious, though par­a­lyzed, when potas­si­um chloride…

A recent op-ed by Theodore Shaw, pres­i­dent and direc­tor-coun­sel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, urged a full and fair inves­ti­ga­tion into the case of Ruben Cantu, a Texas man who may have been inno­cent of the mur­der for which he was exe­cut­ed in 1993. Shaw not­ed that Cantu’s case was ​“fraught with sys­temic errors,” includ­ing the fact that his con­vic­tion was based on a sin­gle eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by a man who has said he was pres­sured by police. Shaw praised the work of the Houston Chronicle, which…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the La Crosse Tribune urged Wisconsin leg­is­la­tors to main­tain the state’s ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The edi­to­r­i­al dis­cour­aged the state from rein­stat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it does not deter crime and is often unfair­ly applied, stat­ing that there is no need to bring back the death penal­ty because the state already has the sen­tence of life with­out parole. Legislators recent­ly vot­ed to hold a non-bind­ing ref­er­en­dum on restor­ing the death penal­ty, though the two ver­sions of the ref­er­en­dum bill have not been rec­on­ciled. The edi­to­r­i­al stated:

The Washington State Supreme Court recent­ly came with­in one vote of effec­tive­ly abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty when it ruled in the case of death row inmate Dayva Cross. Cross is on death row for the mur­der of his wife and her two teenage daugh­ters. Attorneys for Cross had argued that their client should not be exe­cut­ed because killers who had com­mit­ted worse crimes had been spared the death penal­ty. The 2003 case of Green River Killer Gary Ridgway, who received a life sen­tence in exchange for a detailed confession…

Judicature Journal Examines Impact of Death Penalty on Justice System

Victims of vio­lence and ter­ror are not nec­es­sar­i­ly well served by a sys­tem that promis­es ​“clo­sure” in the form of the death penal­ty, accord­ing to a recent Washington Post col­umn by Dahlia Lithwick. Among oth­er cas­es, the author ques­tions the assump­tions in the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s case against Zacarias Moussaoui as it relates to the needs of the fam­i­ly mem­bers from the September 11^th attack: The death penal­ty tri­al of Zacarias Moussaoui has been tout­ed by the gov­ern­ment as a way to bring res­o­lu­tion to bereft fam­i­lies. Hundreds watch the proceedings…

After mem­bers of the Wisconsin Senate passed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum on rein­stat­ing the death penalt, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel edi­to­r­i­al crit­i­cized the vote and urged mem­bers of the state Assembly to reject the pro­pos­al. ThoughWisconsin has not had the death penal­ty since 1853, the state leg­is­la­ture has con­sid­ered a rein­state­ment mea­sure dur­ing each of the past 20 years. The Sentinel voiced con­cerns about inno­cence, race, deter­rence, and a vari­ety of oth­er issues in its editorial:

Each year, DPIC col­lects rel­e­vant death penal­ty arti­cles that have appeared in print and on media Web sites. Our col­lec­tion cer­tain­ly does not con­tain all such arti­cles, nor do we claim that it rep­re­sents the ​“best” arti­cles. It is only a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the exten­sive cov­er­age giv­en to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in print in a par­tic­u­lar year. For those inter­est­ed in exam­in­ing this cov­er­age, we have pre­pared an index of the arti­cles from 2005 in PDF for­mat. Note that we are not post­ing the actu­al text of the arti­cles. The…